We sold the house in 2023 and moved aboard a 12-metre ketch with a vague plan to spend our retirement drifting between French harbours. Three years on, the romance is still there. So is the paperwork. Nobody warns you that living aboard in France as a foreigner is half seamanship and half admin, and the admin is the part that catches people out.
This is the honest version. Not the Instagram one.
The 90-day clock runs whether you like it or not
The single fact that reshapes everything is the Schengen short-stay limit. As a non-EU visitor you get 90 days inside any rolling 180-day window. That covers most of the EU and Schengen states together, so you cannot hop to Spain or Italy to reset it. The clock keeps ticking.
For British boaters this changed overnight with Brexit. Before 2021 we could winter aboard in Brittany and nobody counted the days. Now the gendarmes can, and the entry and exit stamps in your passport are the record. If you want to stay longer, you stop being a visitor and start being a resident, and that is a different legal universe. I have laid out exactly how the counting works in our piece on the schengen 90/180 rule for boaters, because misreading it can get you a ban from the whole bloc.
The practical effect is brutal in winter. A boat does not move much between November and March, but you, the human, may have to. Couples we know take turns: one flies home for a fortnight while the other minds the boat, juggling the days like a chess clock.
Residency is the only real fix
If you genuinely want to live aboard year-round, you need a long-stay visa and then a residence permit. The route that fits most retired liveaboards is the long-stay visitor visa (VLS-TS), which lets you stay beyond 90 days on condition you do not work in France.
The money test is the bit people underestimate. For 2026 the income reference tracks the French minimum wage, which sits at roughly 1,800 euros gross per month per person. Consulates assess case by case, but showing income comfortably above that floor, plus savings, is what gets the stamp. A couple is usually expected to demonstrate something nearer 2,200 to 2,500 euros a month between them. We pulled together pension statements going back a year, and even then the consulate wanted to see reserves on top.
I have written the full breakdown in french residency for liveaboards and the visa maze. Read it before you book a consulate appointment, because the documents take weeks to assemble.
A boat is not an address, and France runs on addresses
Here is the thing French bureaucracy was never designed for: you do not have a fixed home. Every form wants a domicile, every official wants a justificatif de domicile, and a marina berth is a grey area.
Some capitaineries will give an annual contract holder an attestation confirming their berth, which functions as proof of address for many purposes. Others refuse point blank. Before you commit to a port, ask whether they will provide one. It is worth more than the shower block.
This single document unlocks banking, healthcare registration and parcel deliveries. Without it you are improvising, and I have spent more hours than I will admit working out how to receive a chartplotter that the courier insisted on delivering to a residential street. The mechanics of mail are fiddly enough that I gave them their own guide: getting post and parcels as a liveaboard in France.
What it costs to float, not just to live
People ask about the cost of living. The cost of the boat existing is the part that surprises them.
An annual afloat berth in France runs anywhere from about 1,300 euros at a quiet inland or small Atlantic port to well over 16,000 euros for a large yacht on the Cote d'Azur. Our 12 metres on the Atlantic coast costs a shade under 4,000 euros a year on a fixed contract, which is far cheaper than the nightly visitor rate would imply. Booking by the year is the only sane way to live aboard.
Then come the running costs nobody photographs:
- Electricity and water are usually metered. Summer water can top 7 euros per tonne at some ports, and shore power for heating in winter adds up fast.
- A liveaboard surcharge: many ports charge extra to actually live on the boat rather than just keep it, because you use more services.
- Annual antifoul, haul-out and survey, which you cannot skip if you want insurance.
Securing a year-round contract that allows living aboard is harder than finding a summer berth. Ports cap how many liveaboards they accept. Our full method for landing one is in the long-stay berth in France for a foreigner.
Healthcare is better than you fear, but not free
Once you hold a residence permit and have lived in France for three consecutive months, you can apply to join the public health system, PUMa. That gives you a carte vitale and reimbursement on the same terms as a French resident: a standard GP visit costs 30 euros and the state refunds 70 per cent of the tariff.
There is a catch landing in 2026. France introduced a flat annual healthcare contribution for non-working visitor-visa holders, estimated in the 300 to 600 euro range, payable before your carte vitale is issued. It is no longer the free ride it was. I unpack registration, the contribution and the gap a mutuelle fills in healthcare access for liveaboards in France.
Winter aboard is the real test of the dream
Anyone can live aboard in July. February is the audit.
Boats sweat. With two people breathing and cooking in a sealed hull, condensation runs down the inside of the coachroof and pools in lockers. Mould follows. We run a dehumidifier almost continuously from December, and a diesel heater that we wish we had fitted years earlier. The boats that stay habitable through a French winter are the ones set up for it before the cold arrives, not after.
Whether you keep the boat in the water or lift her out is a decision that shapes the whole winter. We stay afloat, with all the dehumidifying and heating that implies; the trade-offs are in keeping your boat afloat over a French winter.
The seasons dictate where you can be
One thing that surprised me is how much the legal calendar and the sailing calendar collide. The Schengen clock pushes non-residents out of the country in winter, exactly when the boat most needs minding. Residents have the opposite problem: you are tied to France for tax and health, so your winters are spent in French waters whether the forecast cooperates or not.
We have settled into a rhythm. Spring and autumn are for moving the boat, taking advantage of quieter ports and cheaper berths. High summer, May to September, is when marina rates can double or triple on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, so we tend to anchor more and pay for fewer nights alongside. Winter is for staying put, working through the jobs list, and not pretending February in a French harbour is anything other than damp and dark.
If you are still earning, the rhythm bends around your work rather than the weather, and a reliable connection becomes as important as a good anchor. Remote work from a French berth is its own subject, with its own tax wrinkles, and worth thinking through before you assume the boat is an office.
Would we do it again?
Yes, but with eyes open. The freedom is real: we have woken to seals in the morning haze off Brittany and eaten oysters bought from the boat that landed them. The constraints are also real, and they are mostly legal and financial rather than nautical.
If you take one thing from this, let it be the order of operations. Sort the visa, then the berth, then the address, then the bank, then the health cover. People who try to do it in reverse, who buy the boat and arrive expecting the rest to fall into place, are the ones who give up by the second winter. Get the boring foundations right and the living-aboard part looks after itself.
